OBSESSED (#2): The West Memphis Three, gladiators and surreal joy of 'The Meg 2'
Oh, and some submersible chat.
This has been an awful week. The suffering in Israel, Palestine and Gaza is stomach-churning. If you’re able to donate funds, Charity Navigator pulled together a list of reputable organizations with clear aid and assistance plans. Take care of yourself, be conscientious of what you consume, and do whatever you can to minimize the unbelievable misery our fellow brothers, sisters and siblings are experiencing in a genocidal conflict they desperately wish they weren’t a part of.
(For a lot of us, that action may look like less talking, more listening and giving.)
This week…
I’M OBSESSED WITH WATCHING:
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills: a sprawling HBO documentary composed of three film installments made in 1996, 2000 and 2011. Have you heard of the West Memphis Three? I hadn’t! And that’s tough to admit, in a forum populated by people whom I hope respect my thoughts and opinions. Kinda feels like hoping people take you seriously after you tell them you believe in Santa. Apparently the West Memphis Three are, uh, pretty well-known, and I’m purporting to have a newsletter based on, at bare minimum, my supposed working knowledge of popular culture. Anyway!
For my fellow dumbasses: In 1993, three boys were found dead in a creek in Memphis. Their killings were brutal and gruesome, with plenty of macabre details to satisfy any run-of-the-mill satanic panic enthusiast who thinks any murder might’ve been a devil sacrifice. Within roughly eight seconds of the bodies being found, three teenagers are arrested for the murders. One of the boys wears black T-shirts and listens to Metallica. Another has an IQ of 72! Awesome! Would you be shocked if I told you that zero physical evidence links the teens to the crime? How ‘bout if I told you that the teen who listens to Metallica is also into Wicca?
(That kid, who appears to be fully and completely innocent, also opted to start going by “Damien” a few years before the murders. He swears it’s because he was into this 17th century Roman Catholic priest. Brother, I fully support your innocence and condemn the prejudice that led to your arrest, but c’mon. We all know you weren’t into a priest. You dig devil shit! And that’s OK!)
Paradise Lost is unbelievable and devastating. The access the filmmakers have to the accused, to the families of the victims, to the prosecution … it’s staggering. And it’s an essential reminder of the public service that a true crime documentary can serve. Paradise Lost isn’t interested in shock and awe; I cannot stress how gruesome the murders were, and that gruesomeness isn’t even the documentary’s twelfth-biggest focus. Its focus is on, shockingly, documenting the real-time events as thoroughly and starkly as possible. And like The Jinx shone a light on parts of Robert Durst that otherwise would’ve remained in the shadows, the documentarians’ presence fundamentally changed the trajectory of the West Memphis Three’s lives.
I’M OBSESSED WITH READING:
This staggering Rolling Stone article, written by Alex Morris. Though, I think we should retire the “CTE” moniker and go with something a bit more representative of the degenerative disease. Something like “brain rot.” Or “sloppy pink mud sloshin’ ‘round the skull.” Or “your brain resembles melted salmon.” Because there’s something about having the physiology of CTE explained that really, in a stomach-churning fashion, communicates just how monstrous this disease is.
Here’s how CTE destroys people. In normal circumstances, when somebody’s bumped in the head, their brain can repair any small, seemingly benign damage: microscopically torn blood vessels, detached neurons, scrambled proteins. But in football, your brain doesn’t get a break. It’s bumped and bumped and bumped. And eventually, the exhausted brain gives up on repairing those injuries. So, those proteins start to rot. Then, those rotten proteins create toxic lesions that melt deeper into the brain, sometimes even reaching the brain stem. Before long, the brain’s a hot, steaming chunk of Swiss cheese, and that brain’s owner? He’s certainly felt better.
Did you know that, in the 1890s, The Chicago Tribune declared football would “physically ruin thousands of young men”? Or that Teddy Roosevelt supported rule changes to make the game safer? “Football is no game for boys to play,” the Journal of the American Medical Association once proclaimed. But, on the other hand, Aaron Rogers is gonna annihilate the other boys in the other color, maaaan! Peyton Manning! Biceps! CLOBBER! Damn, it feels good to be an American.
OK, ready for some levity?
I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT:
A glorious scene from the cinematic event of the decade: “The Meg 2: The Trench.”
Let me first tell you some of the more grounded parts of “The Meg 2.” An eccentric billionaire conservationist raised a megalodon in captivity from puphood; like a dog, the black-eyed shark is bonded to the billionaire. A teen sneaks onto a submersible (!!) without anybody noticing. At one point, somebody eats a sandwich. Thus concludes the list of plot points and narrative devices that could remotely be considered “grounded” in this pitch-perfectly stupid testosterone fest that dares to ask the question: “If dinosaurs evolved to roam the ocean floor, could Jason Statham fight them off with a laser gun?” (Yes, and he’ll look damn good doing it.)
The general gist of The Meg 2 is this: a ragtag group of environmental outlaws descend in submersibles (!!) to the ocean floor to study megalodons. Chaos ensues. And who would’ve thought the ocean floor could be home to so much? Not only the aforementioned dinosaurs, but also, a sprawling criminal mining operation (where pillagers plunder for, scientifically speaking, “rare Earth minerals”) and megalodons. So, so many megalodons. Oh, and an octopus the size of Greenland. I will say, setting the bulk of the action on the ocean floor is a smart move — when Statham and a team of scientists scurry around the seafloor in depressurized suits, it gives the impression the megalodons descending from the inky sea are aliens descending from outer space, our idiot brigade on a distant planet.
Did I mention Jason Statham and the bottom of the ocean? Great. Allow me to walk you through the dumbest scene I’ve been fortunate enough to witness with my naked, unworthy eyeballs. Because of a plot point that doesn’t matter, Statham needs to swim outside the mining compound on the seafloor… but he can’t wear his suit. Or anything, save for his cargo pants and tight-black T-shirt.
The compound sits seven miles below sea level. At roughly 100 meters below sea level, the underwater pressure kills most people. Sounds like an impossible mission, right? Sounds like, upon stepping foot outside that pressurized compound, any human being would implode? Sounds like something so fantastical, so fundamentally out-of-step with fundamental physics of the known universe, that not even the most generous suspension of disbelief could justify it?
[Quotation marks notate a direct quote.]
INT. SUBTERRANEAN MINING COMPOUND
JASON STATHAM, smoldering: Push the red button. I’m walking into the ocean.
MISCELLANEOUS BRUNETTE SCIENTIST: Jason, we’re twice as deep as the Titanic wreckage. Every cell in your body will collapse on itself to the point of no longer existing.
BRUNETTE DOCTOR, recalling something she almost certainly read on Reddit: “Water doesn’t compress under pressure, so if he can force water in his sinus cavities, he could survive 30, maybe 60 seconds before he passes out.”
DOCTOR NEVER SEEN ON CAMERA, included solely to give credence to the BRUNETTE DOCTOR’s hamfisted worldbuilding: “It’s possible!”
ALSO SOMEONE ELSE AT SOME POINT IN THIS SCENE, NOT KIDDING: “You don’t see fish swimming around in metal suits.”
The Meg 2 is one of those films that makes me wonder: “How many people could’ve been lifted from poverty with the money it took to make this movie?” (It cost $185 million.) This film — nay, movie — has no reason to exist. The difference between a world with “The Meg 2” and a world without “The Meg 2” is nothing. This movie has nothing to teach us; nothing to say about anything. It’s a speck of dust in an arena. I’m tempted to say that by this time next week, I’ll forget I ever saw it.
But I can’t say that, because The Meg 2 is unforgettable.
P.S.S. (Post-Script ‘bout Submersibles):
Yep. Mama’s got some warm submersible milk for my mentally ill OceanGate babies. This is not a drill: “THE MEG 2: THE TRENCH” DEPICTS AN IMPLOSION ABOARD A SUBMERSIBLE. Not a submersible implosion, per se, but a person imploding inside a submersible that wasn’t depressurized. For any Titan freaks (myself included), this might as well be a snuff film.
Even better? The implosion is depicted moments before Jason Statham emerges into exactly the same conditions that just caused his comrade to implode. But, again, he sucked a few drops of water up the nose. Really makes all the difference. I hear the air even makes it to your fingertips.
What are the chances that, not 100 days after the globe’s idiot attention is captured by a submersible implosion, the hellfire of Hollywood gifts those perverts with a high-resolution depiction of a human body imploding? Would this scene have gathered more attention if it wasn’t in The Meg 2, a film which absolutely nobody is paying attention to?
This is the only time I’ll ever be grateful for the American studio system; thanks to them, there now exists a rendering of a human imploding that cost more than many countries’ GDP. God bless America, the dumbest nation on the planet.